Neonoir - Criterion Channel Teaser

While film noir had its heyday in the disillusioned postwar era of the 1940s and ’50s, its seductively moody style and dark, cynical edge have continued to inspire more recent filmmakers—freed from the constraints of the Production Code—to put their own, often subversive stamps on the genre. Featuring unforgettable femmes fatales (Kathleen Turner in the DOUBLE INDEMNITY–inspired BODY HEAT, Linda Fiorentino’s ice-cold bad girl in THE LAST SEDUCTION) and world-weary private eyes (Jack Nicholson in CHINATOWN; Elliott Gould and Robert Mitchum offering their respective takes on Raymond Chandler’s legendary detective Philip Marlowe in THE LONG GOODBYE and FAREWELL, MY LOVELY), this selection of some of the finest neonoirs spotlights the myriad ways in which the hard-boiled vocabulary of noir has endured and evolved over the decades. From the blaxploitation boom (ACROSS 110TH STREET) to Hollywood’s post-Watergate cynicism (NIGHT MOVES, CUTTER’S WAY) to the New Queer Cinema (SWOON) and beyond, these films prove that